There were a man and a woman.
In a world reduced to ruins, they relied on each other, sharing a tender—
“Who the hell said we had a tender relationship?”
“Who the hell is spouting that we’re in some tender relationship?”
Correction.
The names of these two, who lived as dependable comrades, were Grave and Hook.
It had been over two years since they met, and even now they bickered nonstop, displaying a truly chaotic chemistry.
“If we go that way, there’s a power facility where we can get an energy supply.”
“That place looks like it’s screaming, ‘Rapture nest here.’”
“......This time I’m sure.”
“You say that, but it’s been an hour and forty-four minutes since we ran into Raptures, you idiot! How the hell do we run into them six times out of eight!?”
“I’m sure. This time I used a Harmony Cube.”
“The power plant’s gonna get wrecked the second a fight starts!”
“Quit whining!”
“Like you wouldn’t do the same!”
Two years was a span of time that was neither short nor long.
After Hook obtained the reward believed to be from the first Tyrant Rapture they had killed—the Grave Spare Body—he used it to upgrade Grave, who had been on the verge of falling apart.
Together, they roamed the ruined surface, now a playground for the Raptures, searching for NIKKE-compatible Rapture parts and specialized repair components for Cinderella.
Normally, repairing and treating Cinderella would have taken far more time.
But Hook could tear apart ordinary Servant Raptures with his bare hands, and even crush Lord-class and Tyrant Raptures single-handedly.
With Hook’s help, Grave didn’t just get upgraded—she received such an extreme power boost that the term “prototype” hardly seemed to fit her anymore.
Over those two years, their trail of destruction was nothing short of a shocking, indiscriminate disaster.
The reason was simple—
“It’s a relief Cinderella’s brain wasn’t damaged. If it had been, things would’ve gotten a lot more complicated.”
“The Ark is dangerous.”
“Ah. I can’t argue with that. Human greed and irresponsibility are always there by default, same as ever.”
“This time, I’ll definitely wake Cinderella up.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. To restore a core that’s been converted into a Heretic, you need a continuous energy supply.”
“......I’ll tear every Rapture apart and kill them all!”
“Haa.... you weren’t this kind of character before....”
By the time nearly a year had passed since Grave’s upgrade, they discovered a ruined research lab that seemed to have once been a medical facility from the old V.T.C.
Hook kept watch, while Grave—unlike in the original story—managed to recover some knowledge through a reunion with her “past self” via the spare body.
As a result, even though it was a ruined lab, they repaired and activated a medical machine capable of analyzing Cinderella’s brain condition.
And at last, they found the reason Cinderella’s consciousness still hadn’t returned.
Core deterioration.
Thanks to Grave’s devoted care over the long years, Cinderella’s brain was fortunately pristine, without a single trace of damage.
However, with the fragments of Grave’s recovered memories and knowledge, they could roughly figure out what state Cinderella had been in.
“She must’ve been in pain from falling from a great height. Strong thermal expansion caused some damage to the core.”
“I had a feeling, but I never thought she really fell from the atmosphere.”
“In the worst case, we’ll have to replace the core. But.....”
“At this point, manufacturing or replacing a high-output core like that is practically impossible.”
Perhaps because it had been a medical facility as well as a research lab?
Hook and Grave had already completed a full body check, including the brain.
Everything except the core was green.
In other words, if they solved just one problem, Cinderella would rise again.
“.....Let’s find a Heretic. Then we can capture one and either extract its core or modify it and transplant it into Cinderella.”
“You’re insane.”
“Insane? Hey, we’re almost there. Kill humans? Or kill another NIKKE? Either way, if we’re going to keep hunting Raptures, we’ll have to deal with a Heretic too.”
“Even Rapture cores are dangerous, and now you want to extract the source core from a Heretic? No matter how strong you are, a Heretic is too much.”
“You giving up before even trying?”
“We need another method. I can’t keep burdening you any further.”
“We can kill Raptures while we’re at it, and take out the Queen’s vanguard too. You think treating Cinderella is going to be easy? You’ve been doing it for over seventy years.”
“That was then, this is now. You’ve already done more than enough. Pushing yourself any further is dangerous.”
It was a gamble—vague and risky—that would put both Grave and Hook’s lives in peril.
Grave wanted to use every scrap of recovered knowledge she had to manufacture a replacement core.
But Hook proposed something far more extreme: capture a Heretic—an apex Rapture and vanguard of the Queen—and rip out its core.
“How many times do I have to say it? I want to see you, Cinderella... and the others too. I want a happy ending.”
“Superhuman.....”
“If we’re going to run into a Heretic anyway, then we have no choice. And that could be our chance.”
For nearly a year, Hook had been smashing countless Raptures to pieces, even mastering every single one of Eunwol’s fifth skills.
He still had a long way to go before the sixth skill, but even just using the fifth skill while learning to control his power—
From a Rapture’s point of view, he was a disaster.
Grave shook her head at the sight of Hook, who continued to evolve day by day despite having shattered all common sense.
Even if Hook was an anomalous “human” and a “superhuman,” she still believed a Heretic was too much.
What was a Heretic?
A fusion of Rapture and NIKKE—beings who looked like NIKKEs but had defected to the Rapture side, draped in grotesque weaponry.
On top of that, their absurd regenerative ability, which used nanomachines to repair damage, was nothing short of astonishing.
And above all else, there was their defining trait: “gigantification.”
They could transform into giant biological Raptures modeled after enormous creatures.
That was why Heretics were known to be even more dangerous than Tyrant-class Raptures, who were already considered abnormal.
Having once been chased by one of those Heretics, even if only briefly, Grave desperately tried to stop Hook.
“For now, until we come up with a countermeasure, we’ll only use the energy extracted from Rapture cores. Just in case, the nanomachines might be able to focus on restoring the core.”
“Nanomachines really are something else~”
“They’re also a fatal factor for humanity.”
For a year, they carried out Cinderella’s detailed examinations and worked out countermeasures for the deteriorated core.
And then the two of them moved again.
As Hook’s inventory-handling ability improved, they stored the devices used to inspect Cinderella in his inventory.
“Let’s set up a reasonably safe shelter. Make a so-called ‘checkpoint,’ so if anything happens later, we can handle it there.”
“Good idea.”
After that period where they were getting along fairly well, another year passed.
KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-BOOM!
“I knew it!”
“Tch! Superhuman! Multiple Raptures at nine o’clock—!”
“Damn it! So annoying! Quit swarming us, you bastards!”
PAPAPAPAPAPAPAPAPANG!
It had been a year since Hook and Grave began their “Rapture hunting,” extracting core energy in preparation for a possible encounter with a Heretic, or to preserve the core intact when they found a Tyrant-class Rapture.
Cinderella, stored in the coffin-like incubator called the “Therapy Coffin,” had been absorbing only an appropriate amount of core energy for about a month, until at some point the amount she absorbed began to increase.
As a result, Hook and Grave’s hunting speed and the number of Raptures they took down kept rising, and soon—
{ Kiiiiiiiiiiing—! }
“Oh~ nice, nice! Today’s a big one!”
“Five Lord-class units! And four of them are the energy-amplifying type called ‘Doctor’! Superhuman! We have to capture at least one of them!”
“Hahahahahahahaha! Let’s have some fun!”
Hook shot forward like a missile, laughing happily as he smashed a Lord-class Rapture to pieces in an instant.
To be precise, he punched the exact spot where the core was and ripped it right out.
KWAJIK! BOOM!
“Become my EXP fodder! You damn scrap heaps!”
CRASH! CRASH! CRASH! CRASH! CRASH! CRASH! CRASH! THUD!
The remaining Lord-class Raptures were instantly shattered by the raging fist technique of the burning deer-like spirit, losing all strength and collapsing on the spot.
The one Lord-class Rapture that had suffered the least damage, a single “Doctor” equipped with energy-amplifying cylinders on both arms, hurriedly prepared to counterattack—but
“Too slow.”
KWA-ZZZZAK! THOOM!
A tiny purple blade spirit wielding a massive purple scythe tore apart its legs, and the shockwave severed its energy supply, forcing the Lord-class Rapture into sleep mode.
Just 31 seconds after the five Lord-class Raptures were annihilated.
Grave clicked her tongue and shook her head at the sight, but
“Cinderella’s core energy should be fine for a while now.”
She couldn’t hide her smile at the huge haul.
This was what the two of them were doing on the surface now.
Smashing Raptures, tearing them apart, and taking their cores.
And further, capturing Raptures with energy-amplification technology and converting them into short-term decisive-battle “high-efficiency Rapture base energy amplifiers.”
If anyone saw the two of them, they would say this:
Devils.
============
“Done. This time there was less damage, so I finished an amplifier that should last ‘at least a little longer.’”
“......Estimated time?”
“Twenty-four hours. A total of twenty-four hours. If the amount of energy absorbed increases, it’ll be shortened to twelve.”
“Ugh~ this is such a pain.”
“Then control your power.”
“Then I won’t get efficient damage output for taking them down!”
“Control your strength, you brute.”
“B... brute!? Hey! Are you done talking!?”
Grave said that it had already been a little over two years since she and I met.
I had no idea how the original NIKKE timeline was progressing, but so far there hadn’t been any major incidents or changes.
Still, after two years, I guess you could say Grave and I had become pretty close?
“Alright, enough of that. Let’s eat.”
“Food is precious. Save it for emergencies. Take this.”
“Canned food? Where’d you get this?”
“I found it in an emergency food storage room at the power facility. Most of it had gone bad, but a few cans were still fine.”
“Seven cans of stew and five cans of meatballs? What am I supposed to make with this?”
“That soup you made last time was good. I think you should make that.”
“......You don’t even cook, but you eat my food like it’s amazing?”
“Food made by someone else always tastes better.”
“......Haa, where do you even hear lines like that?”
We had started bickering like close friends, splitting up tasks naturally more and more often.
Of course, before that, there had been times when we hid Cinderella while repairing her, but now it seemed we trusted each other completely, to the point where we were openly doing the repairs in plain sight.
“You’re gonna put a hole in Cinderella’s face. Stop staring.”
“I can’t help looking when she’s that beautiful.”
“......Heh.”
“Don’t sound proud—ah, never mind.”
“Cinderella is beautiful. You admit that too?”
“Yeah, yeah, I admit it.”
“That is why we must write a beautiful story, and Cinderella must always preserve her beauty—”
“Hey, before I crack your skull with a can, shut up. Has this crazy bitch just turned into a full-blown fanatic?”
Honestly, was it because Cinderella’s looks were so absurdly unfair?
After upgrading her body, and as our relationship grew closer, Grave started praising Cinderella like a lunatic.
At first I just let it slide, but this crazy woman kept escalating until she was practically going full “Have you heard the word?” level.
We ended up fighting over that too.
“It smells good.”
“Right? I added a little more water, so there’s more broth. Is that okay?”
“It’s good because it isn’t too salty. Superhuman, become a cook later.”
“That’s a bit much.”
I connected a generator to the incubator and plugged the energy cylinder containing the Rapture core into the generator.
The amplifier from the core-stripped “Lord-class Rapture Doctor” began to move.
Energy extracted from the core started passing through the three external generators and heading toward the incubator.
And soon, a faint light filled the incubator.
“What do you think? Cinderella’s recovery status?”
“.....For now, I’ve confirmed the nanomachines are active. But the core damage and deterioration are severe, so the regeneration speed is extremely slow.”
“......”
“The only thing I could figure out for sure is that a core extracted from a Tyrant Rapture is the most efficient.”
“What about Lord-class?”
“If we hunt them like today, we’ll need to consume four or five. Even then, at best, that only lasts twenty-four hours. If the amount of energy absorbed increases midway, it won’t even last twelve.”
“.....Damn, they call them Tyrants, but if you count the Tyrants we’ve actually taken down while roaming around for the past year, it’s not even ten.”
“Exactly. Back when we were running and hiding, it felt like we saw them all the time, but now that we’re trying to find them, there are more times when they’re nowhere to be found.”
We ate soup made from canned food while checking the current situation.
As expected, with the amount of core energy Cinderella had been absorbing lately increasing, and the quality of the required energy rising as well, they had to hunt higher-ranked Raptures more and more often.
But “higher-ranked” was just a label. In practice, over nearly two years—one year of actual activity—they had hunted every Rapture they could see, ripped out the cores, and destroyed them.
“Blacksmith, Harvester, Ultra, Grave Digger....Even if we only caught one of each, that’s still only four.”
“Grave Digger was really a pain.”
“.....Ugh, just imagining it makes me sick.”
They had roamed the surface and extracted cores from four kinds of Tyrant Raptures.
But if there was one truly horrifying one among them, it was the one called the Grave Digger in-game—the ‘worm.’
“We were passing through a place that looked like a sewage treatment plant, and then it suddenly showed up....”
“Honestly, the smell was atrocious.”
“You can just turn off your sensors, but I couldn’t!”
“Sorry, but my olfactory sensor function is broken too.”
“......You fixed it. You upgraded the body, didn’t you!?”
“I don’t know. Some of the sensor shutoff functions just don’t work. The olfactory sensor is one example.”
“This crazy—”
Grave Digger, which they encountered while moving through what looked like the ruins of a sewage treatment plant filled with filthy water, reeked of every kind of filth imaginable.
That dizzying, insane, otherworldly stench made him unleash his fifth skill in earnest, and in the end Grave Digger’s core was smashed to pieces and it was reduced to scrap metal.
“A smelly part and core would be a disgrace to Cinderella.”
“........”
Even if they had extracted the core, Grave would have flatly refused it anyway.
Why? Because if someone told me to eat in a place where the smell of shit and filth was mixed together, I wouldn’t eat either.
In the end, he couldn’t touch food for several days after that, and only after three days—once they reached clean water and purified their sense of smell—could they finally eat again.
As he ate while recalling that memory-that-wasn’t-quite-a-memory—
Thud.
Thud.
Kuuung.
A heavy sound that shook the ground and air jabbed at his ears.
Turning toward the direction of the sound, he saw a massive Rapture spotted at an awkward distance—not too far, but not close either.
“It’s a spider.”
“It’s a spider.”
That made two.
He remembered Grave snickering at the nickname I’d given it.
A spider-shaped, supermassive, erosion-inducing Rapture.
Tyrant-class entity.
The entity named “Harvester” had suddenly appeared.
Something like flesh was grotesquely twitching and writhing on its abdomen.
It was slowly approaching, moving its long legs that somehow supported its geometric, thick body.
“Our opponent is a Tyrant Rapture. Especially one whose core location differs from one individual to another.”
Grave’s eyes were flickering with a faint red light.
At the same time, a soft red glow was shining from her back.
“The core in its abdomen is fake. The real core is in the eye and face area. What are you going to do, Superhuman?”
Her gaze swept over Harvester’s body, and then she asked me a question.
To that question, annoyed by the bastard that had attacked us while we were eating, I forced a smile and said, “What’s there to say? You said Cinderella needs a lot of energy to be repaired, right?”
We were already in a situation where we needed a Tyrant Rapture.
And on top of that, the bastard had the bad luck to attack while we were eating, so his death was absolutely guaranteed.
“That’s the problem. Rapture cores, especially Tyrant-class cores, have a lot of energy, but if you use them as-is, who knows what problems might happen.”
“Damn it....then are we separating the core again this time?”
“Harvester uses [Calling Signal] along with its heavy legs to stomp down or fire energy cannons. Breaking the leg joints first would be faster and more efficient.”
“Okay, so we just smash those sturdy-looking legs that look so satisfying to break, right?”
“I’ll take the left. You take the right.”
I set down my bowl and rushed quickly toward the one still at a distance.
Behind me, Grave pulled out her “new weapon,” protecting Cinderella while also firing at the right leg.
“[Writer’s Eraser]. Ready.”
“Let’s have some fun!”
KWOOM! BOOM!
Late evening.
My and her Rapture slaughter began again.
{ Kiiiiiiiiiiii---! }
THOOM! BOOOOM!
Three minutes into the engagement, Harvester’s face had been torn off and shattered.
==========
Several days after hunting Harvester, the Tyrant Rapture they had met again after a long time—
“I finally found you. So it was you? The pathetic things hunting Raptures.”
The jellyfish bitch had come looking for us.
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